The Manhattan Life Insurance Building was a tower on
Broadway
Broadway may refer to:
Theatre
* Broadway Theatre (disambiguation)
* Broadway theatre, theatrical productions in professional theatres near Broadway, Manhattan, New York City, U.S.
** Broadway (Manhattan), the street
**Broadway Theatre (53rd Stree ...
in the
Financial District
A financial district is usually a central area in a city where financial services firms such as banks, insurance companies and other related finance corporations have their head offices. In major cities, financial districts are often home to s ...
of
Manhattan
Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
,
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
.
History
The original structure at 64–66 Broadway was completed in 1894 to the designs of the architects of
Kimball & Thompson, and was slightly extended north in 1904 to 68–70 Broadway. It was the first
skyscraper
A skyscraper is a tall continuously habitable building having multiple floors. Modern sources currently define skyscrapers as being at least or in height, though there is no universally accepted definition. Skyscrapers are very tall high-ri ...
to pass in Manhattan.
The building was sold at least twice. In 1926, the
Manhattan Life Insurance Company sold the building to Frederick Brown, who then re-sold it to the
Manufacturer's Trust Company a few weeks later. Then, in 1928, Central Union Trust Company, whose headquarters were in adjacent structures to the north, bought 70 Broadway for an undisclosed sum, although the building was assessed at that time at $4 million. Following the Central Union Trust Company's sale of the buildings to the north to the
Irving Trust Company, which then built a new skyscraper at
1 Wall Street
1 Wall Street (also known as the Irving Trust Company Building, the Bank of New York Building, and the BNY Mellon Building) is a skyscraper in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan, New York City, on the eastern side of Broadway between W ...
, Central Union Trust moved to the Manhattan Life Building
and modified the structures at 60, 62, and 70 Broadway.
The building was demolished to make way for an annex to 1 Wall Street, completed in 1965. Sources vary about whether the year of demolition was 1963 or 1964.
[ ''"In 1936, the Manhattan Life Insurance Company relocated its offices to One-Hundred-Twenty West 57th Street in midtown Manhattan. Then, catastrophe arrived when the building was only 69 years old; in a 1963 act of utter desecration, the Manhattan Life Insurance Building was demolished."'']
See also
*
List of skyscrapers
This list of tallest buildings includes skyscrapers with continuously occupiable floors and a height of at least . Non-building structures, such as towers, are not included in this list (for these, see '' List of tallest buildings and structu ...
*
List of early skyscrapers
This list of early skyscrapers details a range of tall, commercial buildings built between 1880 and the 1930s, predominantly in the United States cities of New York and Chicago, but also across the rest of the U.S. and in many other parts of the wo ...
References
{{Financial District, Manhattan
Beaux-Arts architecture in New York City
Broadway (Manhattan)
Buildings and structures demolished in 1963
Commercial buildings completed in 1894
Demolished buildings and structures in Manhattan
Financial District, Manhattan
Former skyscrapers
Skyscraper office buildings in Manhattan